In the conventional clothes dryer, air is heated by either electric or gas elements and circulated through a drum in which damp clothes are rotatably held. The drying and tumbling of the clothes frees a large quantity of lint from the clothes, which is carried from the dryer unit by its exhaust vent. The lint which is typically carried out by the warm air from the dryer is either exhausted through a duct connection to the outside of the house generally through an open port arrangement or it is deposited within some type of a filter screen arrangement incorporated within the dryer itself. Initially, screen type filters generally of a single screen type were incorporated in the dryer unit which provided improvement as compared to having no filter at all. Such filters did not remove lint efficiently so that the basic problem of lint being carried out by the exhausted air from the dryer remained.
The problem was generally resolved by removing the lint by venting all of the warm air stream from the dryer to the outside of the house through a port. This resulted in considerable heat loss since the warm air is immediately lost to the outside atmosphere. This causes a particular disadvantage in colder climates in which it would be far preferable to direct the warm air to the utility room or, alternately, to the basement room in which the dryer might be located to assist in heating these rooms and in making them more usable.
The present invention makes it possible to improve the degree of filtration of lint and entrained particles from the exhausted air. At the same time, it provides a connection and arrangement of parts in the filter enclosure so that the warm air stream which it handles from the dryer may be selectively directed, for example, toward an outside wall of the room. In a further embodiment of the invention, the outlet element from the filter enclosure is shaped and designed to receive a coupling and a handheld hair dryer which can utilize the warm air exhausted from the system and provide a rapid stream of easily controllable warm air for the purpose.
The system thus is designed to utilize and make the fullest possible use of virtually all of the heat generated in the dryer system and to in this manner reduce overall energy requirements in the household. The filter enclosure further operates as a means for restoring humidity to the air in the building since an amount of moisture is entrained in the warm air stream from the dryer. By reason of the mode of construction and connection of the filter enclosure unit, when it is actually desired to direct the warm air away from the room, for example, in mid-summer, it is possible to place the enclosure unit and direct its exhaust warm air stream through a louvered arrangement so that the warm air for the period desired is vented out an open window to the outside atmosphere.